Tax Evasion

New Yorker by James Surowiecki | Oct. 23, 2007 (Comment)

The great lie of supply-side economics

Supply-side economics is the monster that will not die. The supply-side argument that, in the United States, tax-rate cuts pay for themselves--that, after cutting taxes, the government actually ends up with more revenue--has little or no support within the mainstream economic profession, and no hard empirical data to back it up. Myriad studies have demonstrated that both the Reagan tax cuts of the nineteen-eighties and the tax cuts put through under the ... Full Story »

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2.5

by Tom Cox - Oct. 1, 2008

Surowiecki plays a strong hand poorly. There are good criticisms of the supply side argument - he doesn't make them. He actually contradicts himself while trying to show the (real) weaknesses of the supply side case: he admits that tax cuts change behavior, then wants to compare post-cut tax income with what it would have been under the old tax rate, WITHOUT accounting for that changed behavior. His biases are clear but not compelling. Poorly sourced and dogmatic.